100 Arrested in Orange County Drug Sweep

More than 100 people--including a 12-year-old boy--were arrested Wednesday as part of a massive drug sweep of a local neighborhood where authorities say residents were held hostage by rampant crime, drug dealing and hard-core gang activity.

The arrests capped a five-month undercover effort by various federal and local agencies, working with a secretly impaneled grand jury--the first in Orange County history--which issued sealed indictments on a variety of drug charges against 130 suspected gang members or associates. Law enforcement officials said the crackdown ends the reign of the 6th Street Gang in Santa Ana.

“The 6th Street Gang has been busted in every sense of the word,” said Dist. Atty. Michael R. Capizzi, who shared a platform with Gov. Pete Wilson, Santa Ana Police Chief Paul M. Walters and the local head of the FBI to announce the arrests at a news conference Wednesday.

Charlie Parsons, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles office, which also took part in Operation Roundup, said the success of the lengthy investigation was largely attributable to undercover agents who gained the confidence of neighborhood drug dealers and made videotaped buys of cocaine, crack and heroin.

The massive operation allowed officers to arrest most of the gang’s members at one time.

About 28 of the people arrested Wednesday belong to the 6th Street Gang, which boasts about 45 hard-core members, officials said. The remaining defendants are gang associates, they said. Capizzi said that arresting two-thirds of its membership effectively gutted the gang.

The arrests began at daylight Wednesday and were expected to continue until all 130 suspects were in custody. The defendants are to be arraigned later this week in Orange County Superior Court.

The majority face up to five years in prison if convicted of the drug charges against them, while others face additional charges ranging from selling drugs near schools to street terrorism. Five defendants face 25 years to life in prison under the new “three strikes” law, while the arrests of 15 others trigger a “two strikes” allegation that could add up to 10 years in prison to any sentence.

The Santa Ana operation is the latest example of a growing arsenal of novel anti-gang strategies developed by law enforcement officials over the last decade, ranging from court injunctions to street barricades to the imprisonment of gang members’ parents.

Some tactics have proved effective, at least in the short term, especially when the objectives were narrowly focused and clearly defined, experts say. But many of the techniques have had to be scaled back or scrapped after challenges by civil liberties lawyers, who argued that some restrictions were too vague and a violation of 1st Amendment rights.

One of the first anti-gang lawsuits was filed by Los Angeles City Atty. James K. Hahn, who sued a gang for terrorizing the Cadillac-Corning area of the Westside in 1987. The most restrictive measures, such as gathering in public, were deemed unconstitutional. But a judge let stand a far narrower injunction against illegal activities, which officials later credited with reducing crime in the neighborhood.

Since then, officials have implemented even more stringent measures--including some that bar gang members from engaging in otherwise legal activities--in Panorama City, Burbank and Norwalk.

San Fernando officials adopted another controversial ordinance in 1991, banning gang members from a park where a woman and her three children were wounded in a gang shootout. San Fernando police declared the measure an unqualified success, but the Los Angeles City Council was forced to scrap a similar plan to ban gang members from all parks, beaches and playgrounds after police complained that it would cause more problems than it would solve.

Perhaps the most surprising disclosure in Wednesday’s operation was the arrest of a 12-year-old named Tony, whom officers said they had seen selling cocaine day and night. Law enforcement veterans said that although they were saddened by his arrest, they were not surprised.

“Since he was so young we wanted to pick him up just to help him,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Joseph P. Smith said. “I know that sounds corny, but I think of all the people that we picked up, maybe there is some hope for redemption here.”

Another suspect whose name was not immediately released had a rap sheet dating to the late 1970s that included numerous arrests and convictions for assaults and burglaries and crimes committed while in prison.

“This is a tragedy waiting to happen,” said Wilson, pointing to an enlarged version of the man’s rap sheet, adding that the defendant should have been sentenced to life in prison many years ago but was not because of “idiotic rules.”

The gang that was targeted in today’s roundup claims its turf primarily as the 1000-1100 blocks of West 3rd Street, said Santa Ana Police Lt. Robert Helton.

“The intention is to cripple, severely cripple, or annihilate this particular gang claiming this turf in Santa Ana and terrorizing neighborhoods,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Carl Armbrust said. “People are afraid for their lives, being held captive in their homes.”

Although many hailed the success of the operation as a multi-agency effort to fight troubling gang activity and crime in Orange County, others question whether precious resources were spent on seeking routine charges.

Sources say the most serious charges involve street terrorism for membership in gangs and drug possession and sales, and note that no special prosecutor has been assigned to handle the cases.

Times staff writers Jesse Katz and Anna Cekola contributed to this story.